A corporation teamed up with a University and sold me a textbook as a service for $11,000.00. They justified it as a service by providing four unqualified educators to preside over a failed coding bootcamp in which 35 students attended and only 13 completed.
The fraud is false advertising. Vanderbilt University advertised that career services would provide a dedicated contact for career material advising, who would remain in constant contact with me throughout the experience to ensure I was reaching milestones. They Vanderbilt is advertising another company's employer network on its own website and promised that their network included top companies. The network has nothing to do with Vanderbilt and instead belongs to Trilogy Education Services. Many of these employers are not qualified to be called employers and are actually recruiting companies and pre employment companies soliciting for business.
Not a single person ever reached out to me once throughout the experience. I was told that I was not allowed to quit the bootcamp after a certain date that that I was obligated to pay the full amount. when I expressed doubts about my ability to succeed in the bootcamp I was told not to drop out and that I would be successful and it would be worth it. Officially the Bootcamp told me I was not allowed to drop out to escape any academic penalty. People who did drop out were prorated the tuition amount for the time they spent in the Bootcamp. The total amount of money to pay was $11,000.00 . I am currently working at a BBQ shop for 15 dollars an hour. It will take me a thousand hours of work to pay for this scam they are selling as an institutional educational experience. There are too many falsehoods and stretches of the truth for this Bootcamp. The dishonesty doesn't result from any flat out lies about what the bootcamp offers. The deception comes from how the University sells the Bootcamp as its own and inaccurately describes the quality and value of all the resources that students will gain access to receive after they commit. Every point of contact I had with the Bootcamp from the advertising, to the websites, to the sales people, to the program manager, to the instructors never told the truth about any part of the quality and value that students can expect to receive as a result of attending this Bootcamp. The entire thing was clearly motivated by greed. I interacted with many students and sensed they all felt disheartened by the experience. The instructional staff maintained a phony nonchalant demeanor and forced optimism while critically failing to address the performance issues that students were having. The career services described by the advertising were not delivered during the Bootcamp. At no point did anyone take interest in the fact that I was failing horribly the entire time and I was visibly struggling. The companies involved falsely claimed students would be taught by experienced industry professionals but, it was taught by former students, people who only recently completed the bootcamp with very limited experience who proved ineffective. These individuals who have no significant experience working in the industry nor instructing or teaching were advertised as industry professionals hired by Vanderbilt University, this was a lie. Every other educational program offered by Vanderbilt University employees professionals with advanced degrees and industry experience, they have profiles online. These instructors do not.